TI to Redefine Infotainment for Economy Cars

MADISON, Wis. -- Consumer demand for more advanced in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems, the bring-your-own-device trend, the auto industry’s pressing need to consolidate a growing number of ECUs, and the further progress of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) are key factors driving the automotive chip market today.

In particular, the auto industry’s appetite for advanced in-vehicle infotainment and telematics systems appears to be insatiable. Features such as high-integrity audio, simultaneous multimedia streaming, and a variety of device connections, once considered only for high-end cars, are quickly becoming integral parts of entry- to mid-level automobiles scheduled for early 2015 launch, according to Texas Instruments.

For chip suppliers competing for IVI design-in slots, what matters isn’t just advanced multimedia/graphics SoCs that wow automotive subsystem vendors and consumers. The name of the game is “scalability, design-reuse and [the] faster time-to-market” their chips can deliver to tier-ones and car OEMs, explains Brad Ballard, TI’s marketing manager of infotainment.

True to the playbook, TI launched last week “Jacinto 6 Eco,” the newest member of the company’s “Jacinto” automotive SoC platform. Designed to deliver more affordable and economical solutions for advanced IVI and telematics systems, the Jacinto 6 Eco, designated as DRA72X, is built on the principle of the reuse of software and hardware platforms.

Instead of the dual ARM Cortex-A15 used in the original Jacinto 6, the Jacinto 6 Eco integrates a single-core A15. In place of Imagination’s 3D GFX SGX544MP2, the new Jacinto 6 Eco uses a single-core version of the same graphics processor.

As in Jacinto 6, the Jacinto 6 Eco also maintains the Big-Little architecture. It uses on-chip auxiliary CPUs (two ARM Cortex-M4 cores) to offload the main ARM Cortex-A15 CPU from real time, interrupt-intensive tasks, while supporting auto connectivity peripherals including DCAN, Ethernet AVB, MOST Media Local Bus (MLB), PCIe, and USB2.0 and 3.0, according to TI. Also retained in the Jacinto 6 Eco SoC are a C66 DSP co-processor and HD video co-processor for image video acceleration.

Enabling such features as navigation, speech, and graphics in
entry- to mid-level cars, “you can’t take an IP block away,” says Ballard. Further, many system vendors find the scalable software investment the key. “We offer them scalable SoCs, built on [the] same common architecture, with software-and pin-to-pin compatibility.”

It sounds like the controls for infotainment should be distributed. Even if a luxury car has a hired driver in some cases, the driver must be able to control the infotainment system when they are driving alone. Having controls at each seat with an override in the hands of the driver (like the electric window controls) would seem the ideal solution.

@Krisi I live in India and here in India most of the well to do people having luxury cars keep drivers to drive their luxury cars. Driving on Indian roads is quite tasking especially in busy hours and parking is another problem in business districts. Having a driver solves both the hassles.

While the economy and mid size cars are generally driven by owners , the luxury cars are normally driven by the drivers while the owners sit back .

This aspect is very crucial while designing the infotainment systems for various car models.

So for economy cars majority of the controls need to be on the dashboard whereas for the luxury cars many of the controls especially for the infotainment should be in the hands of the backseat passengers.

@Bert, I agree. Actually, the scalability TI brings to the platform is impressive, and well thought out, I believe. It's one thing to design a super duper SoC, but it's completely another to allow scalability and re-use of software across the different models.

Impressive product. As annoying as it is that so many different standards now exist around the world, to perform the same functions, it's heartening to see products like this one, which will accommodate them all. If I were TI, I might consider more than just automotive applications for this.